Tips, strategies, thoughts and discussion for increasing your Metalstorm Online Skills.
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Saturday, January 21, 2012

Maneuvering

Swipe left/right:
Roll maneuver. Best when under
attack. Useful to accelerate and change
direction at the same time as roll to avoid a missile or cannon fire. May drain your energy if you do it too often (as with most maneuvers except for decelerating).

Swipe down: Perform a
180 (reverse direction) maneuvers. Good
when your adversary is directly behind you – quick maneuver to face him. I use this maneuver if I am in a weapons or defense class plane fighting against an opponent with light missiles. If you do a bull run away from the opponent, get some distance from him and flip back at him at the right point in time, the missiles that he fires at you will miss and then you will have a clean shot at him. Have taken out many opponents this way. Recommend not doing this against Bisnovat missiles though as they will likely keep tracking you and take you out.

Swipe up: Sends plane
vertical – changes to higher elevation going the same direction. I do not use this maneuver very often –
perhaps somebody else knows its value. If you swipe up 2 times in a row, you can do a 180 degree turn also I believe.

Hard turns: You can
turn the sharpest when decelerating (down arrow which activates your
flaps). Use this maneuver when fighting in
close quarters (circling around your opponent).

Accelerate/Decelerate:
Acceleration while under attack will aid in missile/cannon
avoidance. Mixing up acceleration and deceleration will
come with practice to outmaneuver your opponent. Combining turns with acceleration/deceleration is the key to being a good pilot in this game.

Close Engagements: Getting in position for a good shot: When flying in a close proximity engagement, you and your opponent will tend to circle each other. If you both keep a constant position, the player with the more agile plane will typically catch up with the slower plane. Perfecting your skills in this type of an engagement is what really separates the men from the boys or ladies :-). You can start to visualize where the other plane is based on the red pointer, even if you can't see him on your screen. This is where doing rolls and quick direction changes pays off. It takes time and practice to be able to maneuver well in close engagements and is really the key to a becoming a highly skilled player.

Lead your Missiles in close range shots: Another important strategy in close engagements is to lead your opponent (aim in front of them) when firing a missile. If you are tracking a fast moving adversary at close distant, firing your missile directly at him will result in a miss. You want to shoot the missile in front of him which will give the missile a better intercept course.

Timing your Missile Shots:
Shooting 2 missiles in quick sequence can be a good strategy when you HIT your opponent but if your opponent makes an evasive maneuver, he can usually avoid both at once. I have, at times, spaced apart the firing of the pair by a 1 to 3 seconds - this makes it harder for your opponent to avoid both as the second missile may still track him after his evasive maneuver. This is something you can experiment with and will vary on the type of missile that you are carrying.

Bull Runs: If you have a weapons class or defense class plane, a good strategy (especially against an agility class plane with lower class missiles) is to do what I call a bull run. Try to avoid the close engagement and instead do a high speed run away from your opponent. Once you get far enough away, reverse direction and fire your missiles. This will usually give you a clear shot at him. Keep in mind that he will likely be firing at you while you do your run. Trick is to reverse direction (downward swipe) at the right time to avoid his missiles and then nail him with your own. The better performing missiles work especially well in this maneuver. Warning - if your opponent has coin missiles like Bisnovats, there is a good chance that the missiles will nail you when you do your reverse move. If you are flying an AGILITY class plane and your opponent does a bull run AGAINST you, you are faster than him and can usually foil his run by sticking as close to him as possible at full throttle as he runs to continue the close engagement.

71 comments:

Can you explain a little bit more detailed what you mean with "lead your opponent some when firing a missile"? I am not an English native speaker and could not figure out, how this differs from " firing your missile directly at the opponent".

Trust me, Bull Runs is actually... really useless and pointless.... No matter what kind of weapons or plane you're using, as long as your opponent is skilled and you backflips, you die very very easily. Besides, people keeps backflipping for 150 seconds for the whole match... what's the point in playing this dogfight game? It's not dogfight: online, it's backflip: online. So, I don't recommend this maneuver strategy. just my view 涼宮ハルヒ

I've been able to use this approach against adversaries with lower level missiles and flipping from a distance shortly before the missiles hit - although haven't done it against anyone with really high skill levels, admittedly. It seems to be a good way to break a circling match that starts to get monotonous sometimes

Ahh, that clears my mind :)Just, if you meet newbies, anything you want to do can be done.But remember this, when you meet high skilled people (mostly 20K SR or above, but I gotta tell you that the SR system is useless... lots of aces have secondary account with low SR), just don't backflip. That's my advice to you :)

One of the nice things about SGAS is that you can't have monotonous circling matches that go on for minutes- after the first few seconds of hard circling, you black out. Then you and your opponent have to try something different.

Another addition to the Bull Run that I like to do sometimes is when fighting over big mountains, fly low at full speed, duck over mountain for cover from incoming rockets, wait a moment then flip a 180 and lock and strike as the opponent clears the mountain.

Anyway, if you want to do these strategies like stay low, bull run etc instead of dogfighting in extreme close range, make sure you're not doing it against anyone with SR higher than 20K. You'll die very very easily. :)

A 20k player will get you, no doubt, but he'll probably get you anyway, so why not try some variety :-). I think that z2 should encourage creative maneuvers and getaways more to add varieety to the game. Port Crescent dogfights had great potential with all the buildings and bridges to fight around, but lag was so bad, their servers couldn't seem to handle the load. My other suggestion is to allow versus matches in the mission 4 canyon ( winged serpent). That would also be very cool.

Hey 涼宮ハルヒ, be more productive, not negative. You need to keep in mind what this article is about.You've already shot down two tips that Anonymous has given to beginners, and I haven't seen you provide any useful tips.Anonymous never said that this strategy will work for everything, it is one strategy out of thousands.If you're playing against someone with SR over 20K, then you'd know hundreds of other strategies already.

Does a higher SR give you better skills? In other words, does leveling up give you any added advantage in terms of maneuverability, attack strength, armor, etc.? I only ask because whenever I go up against a high SR pilot, it seems that their planes can do things that mine can't, even if we have the exact same plane/upgrades/armament. I could swear that they have some kind of unfair advantage (I even think that some might be hacking the game and upping their plane's upgrade factors!).

This is a good point, mate. I think they fly fully upgraded weapon class planes with great skill so they know tricks that maybe you didn't discover yet, like rolling or swiping up in circoling matches to fire at you without you to be able to do anything. Or they are just cheaters.

Good Strategy: Whenever the opponent is attempting a "Bull run", do not shoot until they do the flip. If you shoot first, the opponent will know to flip, not only to evade the missiles, but to gain advantage and to acquire a chance to shoot you. Using this tactic, when they attempt the "Bull run", accelerate to keep up with them, so when they perform the 180 flip, the distance between you and the opponent will be tinier, resulting in less damage. Also, in the time they are running away, attempt to go at a low altitude, making the opponents missile harder to get you as the missiles will have to go down. Attempt to cannon them too when they are doing the run.

another trick: when in a hawken or eagle x or any plane with fast reload speed:fire one missile when the guy does a bull run, then fire the other missile after he flips, then another, roll out of the way, fire another. space the time between consecutive missiles so opponent runs out of energy quicker. will help if in eaglex as can snipe from long range due to added lock range

To Dedalus: No, but since the newest update (4.0.05), your skill rating will change who you fight. Perhaps what they do is because they have upgraded their plane very well, or its lag( happens to me, opponent does swirls and stuff) or lastly, HACKING!!!

Hackers should be shot! They really ruin the game for me. Now I just quit the game as soon as I realize I'm playing against a hacker, which is fairly obvious (like when a plane sporting sidewinders or AIM-120's can shoot my fully upgraded defense class plane in one or two shots!). Really, can't the programmers stop this from happening?

I'm managing to get better at dogfighting and I was wondering if I should use the target lock camera more often? Actually, I almost never use it.. I would be happy to get some input, especially from those who have reached high ranking.

I always use bull runs when I fly my eagle x. After I do the backflip, I fire my missiles one at a time at a steady rate. My opponent soon runs out of energy and I can just keep firing at him. I think this is a very good strategy.

A lot of people are hackers who have enabled cheats for their planes. Cheaters really annoy me and they should be banned! You can usually tell someone's a hacker/cheater if their skill rating to games played ratio is around 10:1, or if they use strange symbols or icons.

O god, maybe that's why I suck. i'm almost at 3k and i've been using target lock religiously up until now. now that i'm playing higher skilled opponents, my maneuvering gets screwed up while in target lock and i can rarely get them in my crosshairs. i'm definitely gonna start using it sparingly now

Thanks MetalStorm Forever! I figured this view may help to get a good position and catch your opponent, but it must be tricky to maneuver your plane accurately using this view. Curious to get some input from others?

All my dogfights seems to end up in a continous circling with niether of us gaining an afvantage.Bull runs etc dont seem to work either, so both of us just go round and round,nor up amd down around each other. Any tips please?

Either they're hackers or it's lag; LAG becomes a great issue in versus because once I had an opponent who was flying straight, in front of me, then he/her ended up behind me, the plane vanished in front!

has anyone also noticed that when doing co-op for survival, the enemy planes seem much harder to hot and keep on jumping across the screen while your partner can easily take the plane out? then, if all of a sudden your partner decides to crash, the enemy's seem much easier to destroy? It has been such an annoying feature that i have almost given up on doing co-op for survival and i mostly solo now.

I am having exactly the same problem. In co-op the enemy planes are jumping around untill my partner is destroyed. Then everything is back to normal... I tought there is a problem with my phones wi-fi system but it is the same when I connect via 3g... What is the problem with that?

Sometimes it's better to engage an apponent from higher altitude. The thing is, when you are facing missiles it's always good to speed up to have a better chance on dodging those basterds. For example with the hawken you don't have much speed, but if you fly down you have gravity on your side and an advantidge on speed, your ennemy faced up is slowed down so is more likely to get hit. Another thing, when you cirlcle around each other and nothing really happens but chasing, this could help you on maneuvering your plane so you have a lock on them. Swipe up, speed up and do a vertical barrel run and hit what you can. It's not a solid strategy but, try to find a weak spot or good moment (when your opponent "just" moved out of your screen). Sometimes at the end when nothing is expected anymore, maybe... that's your call!

Yes I am also very frustrated when my fully upgraded Thresher is smoked by guys with side winders. The only plane with standard evasive capabilities is kicked around like a soda can. The hackers are a curse to this game.

Hey Guys! I think I have found a great utility of the swipe up: when you are in a classic circoling match, you are willing to cannon down ur opponet and you are circoling from down to up, you can use it to see and cannon your opponent (if you are using an agi plane with 100% tracking missiles you can also try to missile them).

Interesting trick for agility planes: Micro-bull runs. I a low-speed circling match, just increase speed for a second and then reduce it again; this action will sometimes give you a quick opportunity to get a few shots in at your opponent. Don't speed up for too long, though, or your opponent will get a nice long opportunity to shoot you.

When my SR was 1K, all I knew was to flip or circle while braking and following the arrow, and I thought 70% of players were cheaters, but I kept learning...

When my SR was 5K, I thought all 10K+ players were cheaters, but I kept learning...

Now my SR is 20K+, I am still learning, and now I know that these players were not cheaters, they were simply better. Now I am regularly called a cheater... because I regularly kill coin noobs with RAAMs.

So, stop your silly whining, learn to fly, and don't play over slow/mobile connections: 99% of UFO-like jumps are not cheaters, but your network lag, or Z2 server hiccups.

Wanted:.. Pro pilot, to help me train in verses matches. I've been playing for a month and a half, with a SK 2122... So, i'm NO NOOB! But i am disabled. A ( quad) in case you don't know i'm paralyze from the neck down. So, i have limited use of my hands. But i'm still able to play and kill! (Believe that!). Anyways, my problem i have in verses... When the match starts, i try to hit hard first, then bolt, as my opponent does! After that is when the shit hits the fan! Progressing to a circling match. My opponent is able to hit from the back, bottom and side! Which then i resort to "back flipping or barreling" to no avail (sometimes). Some of you have Probably fought me. If you can help me, it would be Gladly appreciated. My GC: unkwn:|

I always think it is funny to hear agility pilots complaining about weapons class opponents who do a bull run and backflip, and fire their weapons. Agility pilots claim that we have no skill. They would rather have you do a circling battle that they have a clear advantage, and can catch up to you easily and shoot you out of the sky. Why would a weapons class pilot make it that easy. I am a 55 SR, and win almost all of my matches, and against those skillful agility pilots.